Michigan Legislature Consider's Forfeiture Reform
When a crime is allegedly committed, the police and the prosecution can often seize items related to the crime. This can sometimes happen when the owner of the property is completely innocent. In tough times, this has created a conflict of interest in the police and prosecutors. They can easily make a ton of money to help their departments at the expense of innocent individuals. Two bills were recently introduced in the Michigan Legislature to place some modest limits on this problems. HB 5213 would require a criminal conviction before a forfeiture action could be filed. HB5081 tightens up the reporting requirements on the forfeiture so that problem departments can be identified in the future.
Washington Post Criticizes "Sledge Hammer Justice"
Dissenting Judge Kozinski Recognizes Epidemic of Brady Suppression
Brady v Maryland prosecutors to disclose all evidence which is exculpatory in nature or which mitigates punishment. Unfortunately, in our adversarial system prosecutors are often tempted to bury this evidence. The problem comes with the fact that the person exercising this judgment has a conflicting obligation Moschus is to try and convict a defendant. What prosecutor is theoretically the Minister of Justice career advancement is normally based on convictions. Prosecutor to conceal evidence rarely phrase discipline for doing so and I virtually never prosecuted.
Kenneth Olsen was charged with developing chemical weapons of mass distraction. There was evidence presented at trial that he was attempting to develop the chemical ricin. The quantities impurities of this drug however were so low that the government was going to have a difficult time proving that the defendant had any intent to injure other people. To overcome this, the assistant United States attorney call Arnold Meinkhoff as their expert witness. Prosecutor concealed an internal investigation which showed huge problems with this expert witnesses integrity or level of care. Fourteen of his one hundred investigations which were audited showed serious problems.
This was never turned over to the defense counsel. The majority of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this nondisclosure. A majority of United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then denied en band rehearing.Judge Kozinski not only dissented from the results in that case, but noted that Brady violations had reached epidemic proportions.
Judge Kozinski further wrote:
“The panel's ruling is not just wrong, it is dangerously broad, carrying far-reaching implications for the administration of criminal justice. It effectively announces that the prosecution need not produce exculpatory or impeaching evidence so long as it's possible the defendant would've been convicted anyway. This will send a clear signal to prosecutors that, when a case is close, it's best to hide evidence helpful to the defense, as there will be a fair chance reviewing courts will look the other way, as happened here."
The problem is systemic. Prosecutors cannot be trusted to determine what evidence must be turned over to undercut their cases. Courts need to move this determination from the prosecutor to an independent master. Similarly forensics needs to be moved from an adversarial branch government to a branch under the court which is not incentivized in anyway to call a matter in one want manor or the other. These experts also need to be shielded from the other evidence and opinions in the case so that all they are determining is based on the evidence they are charge with investigating.
Improper Prosecution PowerPoints Lead to Reversal of Washington and Nevada Cases

The Trial Tax
It is easy to think that you would stand your ground if you are actually innocent, but what would you do if they offered you probation for an offense you did not commit versus twenty years in the joint if the jury convicts. The Acceptance of Responsibility scorings on the Sentencing Guidelines were meant to create an acceptable difference. It gives you about a 15% discount on the average sentence for pleading guilty. The practices outlined by the New York Times are highly problematic.
Great Ruling on False Light Arguments from Sixth Circuit
Then the Sixth Circuit issued its October 30, 2013, Peoples v Lafler opinion. A three-member panel criticized a Michigan prosecutor for a false inference argument and deemed that it was prosecutorial misconduct. The court ruled that AEDPA precluded them from reviewing the case, yet the issue that ultimately was considered dicta in the appellate opinion may nudge open AEDPA’s heavy door. In Peoples v. Lafler, two witnesses told a similar story that was the only evidence connecting Jesse Peoples to the murder of Shannon Clark, a Detroit drug dealer fatally shot outside his home. However, the evidence was “known false testimony” and “trial counsel did not use the only hard evidence at his disposal to prove that the two witnesses not only lied, but told the same lie,” the appellate court said in its opinion.
Three months after Clark’s death, police arrested Jesse Peoples, Demetrious Powell, and Cornelious Harris after the men led police on a chase in a stolen Jaguar that ultimately crashed. Police found on the driver’s side floorboard the pistol that killed Clark. Also, a police officer witnessing the crash writes a report identifying Harris as the driver. Peoples, while awaiting trial, mailed defense counsel a copy of the police report, indictment, and criminal docket sheet showing that Harris was the Jag’s driver. However, they are ignored and Harris and Powell are able to spin a similar story about Peoples’ involvement.
The Sixth Circuit partially reversed the decision relating to Peoples’ ineffective assistance of counsel claim and remanded the case to the district court to conditionally grant a habeas corpus writ, giving the State of Michigan 90 days to retry Peoples or release him from custody. Quoting the opinion, “ ‘[i]t is particularly unreasonable to fail to track down readily available and likely useful evidence that a client himself asks his counsel to obtain.’ Couch v. Booker, 632 F.3d 241, 247 (6th Cir. 2011). Where, as here, counsel fails to use a police report, indictments, and criminal docket sheets the client himself obtained that would have proven counsel’s own defense theory, the failure is, a fortiori, unreasonable to the point of constitutional deficiency. It certainly is not, by any objective measure, sound trial strategy.”
The appellate court’s AEDPA deference delved into discussions of a “modified form of AEDPA deference,” in which the court focuses on the result rather than the reasoning of the state court. Hawkins v. Coyle, 547 F.3d 540, 546 (6th Cir. 2008). The question then, according to the court, is whether there was a reasonable likelihood that the trial’s outcome would have been different if the known false testimony had never been presented. The court concluded that there was other testimony connecting him to the murder so there was no reasonable likelihood that the outcome would have been acquittal or conviction on a lesser charge. Keep in mind, the court decided in this case to “REMAND the case to the district court with instructions to conditionally GRANT a writ of habeas corpus.”
Wilful Blindness" Why Some Prosecutors Don't Want to Know About Police Perjury
Some police departments maintain “Brady lists” of officers with troubled pasts. They try to keep these officers from being affiants in search warrants where possible and regard it as their duty to turn evidence of past scandals over to the defense. At least in California, however, there is no consistent policy about what is in a Brady policy or when a prosecutor has to go back to the police department looking for evidence of past lying on the part of a given officer.
The now disbanded California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice had recommended in their 2008 report that prosecutor’s offices maintain strict and consistent Brady lists. Unfortunately, police departments have pushed back because they think that these lists will make these tainted cops unusable.
One of my new favorite blogs (the Open File) has a nice commentary on this article. The Open File about prosecutor misconduct and urging public accountability. Not surprisingly on the same page are articles about convictions being overturned because the police have failed to turn over more than 11,000 pages of exculpatory evidence in one case, of a federal judge in New Orleans overturning another conviction because their US Attorney’s Office elicited perjured testimony, and a 9th Circuit case overturning a money laundering case because the declassified summaries turned over to defense counsel were misleading and withheld favorable evidence.
As I was about hit the “publish button” on my software, I saw today’s story about Debra Milke, the German mother convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of her son and received the death penalty. The Maricopa County Arizona prosecutor had concealed the fact that the police officer who supposedly took her undocument “confession” had a long history of perjury. Not surprisingly, the prosecutor concealed evidence that the police had a history of perjury. Despite the fact that there was four incidents of perjury by the officer he was kept on the force. Judge Kozinski’s opinion can be found here. Chief Judge Kozinski is the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit a independent minded conservative. Despite the Arizona’s Attorney General’s vow to appeal this ruling, I don’t think he has much chance. While the US Supreme Court has not been kind to the Ninth Circuit, this error strongly suggests actual innocence and seems to be within the four corners of Brady.
NACDL Ethics Opinion: 2255 Waivers Are Unethical
Supreme Court to Decide Sufficiency of the Evidence in Larceny Case
The Truth is Not Negotiable: Court Dismisses Broadcom Prosecution Based on Prosecution Intimidation of Witnesses
Michigan Court of Appeals Rules that Judge Lacks Authority to Dismiss Criminal Case Based on Prosecution Deliberate Misstatements
Illinois Prosecutor's Office Continues Attack on Northwestern Innocence Project
This past Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Wood v. Allen, trying to come up with a working definition of AEDPA deference in habeas corpus cases.Petitioner’s trial teams had three attorneys (one of which had less experience than the others). This lawyer handled the penalty phase, during which he failed to present mitigation evidence, obtained from a competency evaluation, of Wood’s significant mental impairments. It is unclear from the oral arguments what standard the Court will ultimately adopt. It appears that he entire Court was very concerned about articulating a standard that would not further complicate habeas proceedings. What standard they will ultimately choose, however, was in no way clear.
Read More...Michigan Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in Redd Case On Silence in a Non-Custodial Interview
Anthony Redd was accused of having sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old girl. A jury convicted him of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, but the trial court granted the defendant‟s motion for a new trial because the prosecutor elicited extensive testimony from a police detective that the defendant failed to respond to certain accusations regarding the assault and abruptly left an interview. The Court of Appeals reversed and reinstated the conviction. Did the trial court abuse its discretion when it granted the defendant a new trial? Did the trial court err in admitting the police detective‟s testimony? Did the defendant waive any error when his attorney expressed satisfaction with the trial court‟s instructions to the jury? One of the main issues in Redd is the continuing viability of the Michigan Supreme Court’s 1939 ruling in People v Bigge, 288 Mich 417 (1939) which limited the adverse inferences which could be drawn from a Defendant’s silence. People v Redd, Supreme Court No. 138161.
Prosecutors Go After Northwestern Innocence Project
Sunday’s New York Times has an interesting article about state prosecutors trying to turn the tables on the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University. The students of that project provided investigation that is being used in a motion for new trial in the Cook County Circuit Court pertaining to the thirty year murder conviction of Anthony McKinney. The prosecution were provided the affidavits, video tapes of the statements of the witnesses, and their written statements. The state, however, wanted more. They have subpoenaed all the students e-mails, notes, and internal memorandums.
War in the Macomb Circuit Court: Prosecutor Refuses to Offer Plea Bargains in Judge Biernat's Court
Lansing Journal Calls for Regime Change in Ingham County Prosecutor's Office
The Ultimate Conflict of Interest
Michigan Court of Appeals Holds that Same Disqualification Rules that Apply in Civil Cases Apply to Prosecutor
Brief 011207